Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: luck

Luck be a Loki

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I’m taking a break from my multiple-post musings on other subjects because I wanted to ttalk about luck. My brother brought over his Tesla Cybertruck so I could get a ride in it. I brought up that I had to deal with my bank accounts being hacked (ugh), which made me think that I had used up my allotment of luck back in September of 2021 when I had my medical crisis. Back then, my brother joked that he should have bought lottery tickets on that day, but my counter-argument was that I had used up the family’s luck for that year.

At the end of last year, I started to have a string of bad luck that has continued through now. In talking about it with my brother yesterday, I mentioned that I had probably used up my portion of luck for life.

I will add that maybe I’m just in a very bad patch right now. But. It can stop any time now. Really. Here is a list of the bad things/annoying things that have happened to me in the last seven months or so.

1. I had issues with Comcast/Xfinity (no sururise) with how they reported my data usage. Which, I mean. It stayed steady at 10-15GB per month. Then shot up incrementally every month for several months until in November, they warned me that I had uped up my 1TB for the month. Um, what?!? I managed to ameliorate it by getting a new modem, but it’s still not fixed. In part because it’s impossible to get ana actual human being from the company to talk to.

2. I had one a tire puncture that led me to replacing all four of my tires. This was fairly easy to deal with, but quite the hit to the wallet.

3. My telephone line went out. And, again, I could not get an actual human being to talk to. The AI assigning me an appointment with a tech said it would be anytime between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on the upcoming Thursday (this was a Saturday). I woke up on that Thursday at 7:30 a.m., only to get a text saying the appointment would be anytime from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Grrrr…..

4. My sink handle broke. It was already jury-rigged together in a way that meant an extra step to turning it on and off. Around the same time, my garbage disposal broke. So I need a whole new sink.

5. I had to get a new laptop. This wasn’t bad luck so much as it was time, but I was trying to make my old laptop work for as long as possible. It actually lasted longer than I thought it would, but it was still a hit to the old wallet to replace it.

6. The personal tragedy happened that I still am not ready to talk about. This one is huge. It’s left a giant hole in my heart, and I still think about it every day. And it’s what sparked my depression.

7. Daylight Savings. I have never liked it, but I’ve always just rolled my eyes and moved on. For whatever reason, the latest one (in March) has really fucked with me. I wish we could just get rid of it altogether.


Continue Reading

Luck is sometimes on my side

Posted on by • 0 Comments

In yesterday’s post, I talked about luck at the DMV. It was a silly post, but there was an underpinning of seriousness in it. If I had gotten the by-the-book person, I might not have gotten my license renewed. I don’t drive much, but I do drive–and I would not be comfortable driving without a license. I thought I was going to get that person (I was counting0, but I had neglected to factor in the different categories.

I was saying in my head, “Please don’t give me that person” over and over again. I was watching like a hawk, though I don’t know why. There was nothing I could do if I ended up at their station. I heaved a sigh of relief when I ended up with one of the more generous people, and I knew what to do when I had to take my eye test.

I rattled off the letters as quickly and confidently as I could. I did not pause or stutter, and then I was able to see the flashing lights. Did I get all the letters right? I don’t know. They were fuzzy, but I could see them fairly clearly. I just had difficulty knowing if it was, say a capital Q or a capital O. Which, let’s be real. There are very few Qs on a sign.

This is my biggest gripe with the eye test. Signs are not that small. I can read road signs perfectly. Wait. Let me say that I can read font on a computer fairly fine, too. It’s just something about the eye test letters that fuck up my brain. I think it might be in part because when I’m reading, I don’t look at each letter. So it doesn’t matter if the individual letters are fuzzy or not.

I’ve been having a rough time with my sleep lately. It’s Daylight Savings, but it’s also a personal tragedy that I still don’t want to talk about. I have not had this bad of sleep since before my medical crisis–which was two-and-a-half years ago. I’m struggling with it because I got used to sleeping like a normal person. This does not feel good, I’ll tell you that much.

My birthday is tomorrow. My real birthday, I mean. I don’t really care about it. I never have, but I am neutral about it now. I considered September 3rd to be my re-birthday, which is much more important to me. I have some lingering negativity over my actual birthday and would prefer just to let it slip by with no notice.

I have to pretend to care for my parents. Back in my twenties, I used to tell my mother I didn’t care about my birthday. Which was true, but it was exactly the wrong thing to say to her. Because then she started crying and saying it (along with my brother’s birth) had been the most important day of her life. Once again, it was all about her. She did not care about me as a person, but just what my birth meant to her.


Continue Reading

Luck be, no maybe

Posted on by • 0 Comments

My Taiji teacher told me that her classmate got into a terrible motorcycle accident last Sunday. He had a super-great helmet (which got crushed) so his head is fine, but the left side of his body is destroyed. Everything is broken, torn, or sprained. Collarbone, tibia, maybe femur, arm. Broken bones mend, yes, but torn ligaments take longer. We’re talking probably at least a year if not longer. He had a heart attack a few years back–or was it a stroke? Pretty sure it was a heart attack.

At any rate, he’s in a world of hurt. He’s still in the hospital, obviously, and he’s going to be for some time. I, on the other hand, was in and out of the hospital in two weeks. This has been on my mind lately. How incredibly lucky I was.

I felt it keenly for the first month or so after I woke up. The hospital chaplain asked if I questioned why the experience happened to me. No! I’m not special. There’s no reason I shouldn’t have walking (non-COVID-related) pneumonia, two cardiac arrests, and a stroke.

It’s fascinating to me when people think that they should be excepted from something because–well, I’m not sure why. It was like when 9/11 happened. So many people said incredulously that they could not believe it had happened here in America whereas I was just surprised it hadn’t happened earlier.

I told the hospital chaplain that I had no reason to think something like that should not happen to me, but what did surprise me was that I didn’t stay dead. That was where the ‘why me?’ came in. Why was I lucky enough to come back for a second time and not die again?

I know that sounds morbid. It’s not meant to be, though. The first six months I was back alive, i marveled about it almost constantly. I should have been dead. I should have been dead. I should be dead. I am not dead. That is the proper declension of that.

Once in a while, I will tihnk about it and be stunned at how lucky I am. A year and 3/4ths later, I am better than ever. I have a few issues such as short-term memory gaps and having to flounder about for a word now and again, but I will take it in exchange for being alive.

Really, that’s the kicker every time. I’m alive when I should be dead. There’s no way that can be overstated or overemphasized. I should not be here. My life should be over. The fact that I still draw breath is incredible and amazing!


Continue Reading

Survivor’s guilt

Posted on by • 0 Comments

When I was in the hospital, I had a chat with the chaplain. I was not asked if I wanted to have this chat beforehand, but I did not mind. At that point with all the drugs pumping through my veins, I would have talked with anyone.

He told me that I may feel survivor’s guilt at some point, which I didn’t while I was in the hospital. Wait. That’s not exactly true. One day, while I was lying in bed as I was for much of my first few days awake, I overheard my care team talking about another patient. She was a young woman in her twenties and had just died from COVID. I felt survivor’s guilt then because she was so young and had died. More info came out such as she had not been vaxxed, nor had her entire family. And it turned out her mother died as well.

Later, I realized that the whole thing probably did not happen. I hallucinated a lot while I was in the hospital, and this was probably one of the delusions. It just did not make sense that they would all be talking about this patient and that they all knew her outside of the hospital, even though the family were ranchers with a website. Yes, this was what my brain was telling me was the truth. I don’t think any of it happened, but it did make me feel guilty that I had survived while this mythical twenty-two year old had died.

When I went home, I was mostly profoundly grateful to be alive. I was amazed at how brilliant everything was. Well, not everything as I had to deal with the family dysfunction, but apart from that, everything was awesome.

I didn’t think about much of anything, to be honest, for the first month. I was just resting up and regaining my strength. I started slowly with my Taiji, only doing stretching the first few weeks. I did try the sword on day three, just three movements. That was way too much, but it also showed me that I would get it back again eventually.

That was the important part. I needed to know that I would still be able to do my weapons. I didn’t care about anything else, really, in the first few weeks. I could not see properly, so I could not do much online for the first week. My brother made the font larger so I could read websites, but that was for very brief amounts of time.


Continue Reading